Poetry Day with Little Island authors Meg Grehan & Gráinne O’Brien
This event has now passed.
In celebration of Poetry Day, we are delighted to present Meg Grehan and Gráinne O’Brien in conversation with Siobhán Parkinson on their new verse novels at 6.30pm on Thursday 1st May. Space is limited so booking using the form below is essential.
About The Brightest Star by Meg Grehan
Stevie, Chloe and Andrew are starting secondary school, and everything is new and scary. There are new people, new classrooms, new challenges.
Stevie and Chloe know they like each other and their afterschool group The Rainbow Club. Andrew’s pulling away and the friends are worried.
They thought they knew who they were together. Now they’re not so sure.
About Solo by Gráinne O’Brien
Solo
a performance in which a performer has no partner or associate
Daisy’s first love is music. Her second was David.
As she starts her final year of school dealing with a breakup, the betrayal of her ex-best friend, and her dad’s illness, she feels more alone than ever.
Even music feels lost to her.
But when she unexpectedly makes a new friend, Daisy begins to find her way back to herself.
THE PARTICIPANTS:
Meg Grehan is the author of five novels-in-verse, they are The Space Between, The Deepest Breath, Baby Teeth, The Lonely Book and The Brightest Star (May 2025). Her books have won two Children’s Books Ireland Awards and been nominated for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, An Post Irish Book Awards and the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing She lives in County Donegal in the north-west of Ireland where she spends her time writing, reading poetry and hugging trees.
Gráinne O’Brien is a writer and bookseller based in Limerick, Ireland where she lives with her husband and two cats. She is the founder of Rontu Literary Service, a service dedicated to supporting writers of fiction for children as they seek publication of their manuscripts, and one of the founders of Silver Apples Magazine. She completed an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Limerick in 2018 and received an Irish Arts Council Agility Award in 2021, 2022 and 2023. She was named a Bookshop Hero by The Bookseller Magazine in 2022. She writes for children and adults and loves weaving classic and traditional stories into the modern world. The O’Brien Press published her bestselling picture book, A Limerick Fairytale.
Dr Siobhán Parkinson is a children’s writer and was the inaugural Laureate na nÓg. She founded Little Island in 2010 and still helps out on the editorial side. Her most recent book, Evie’s Christmas Wishes, was published by Little Island in 2021.
